


To Face Unafraid the Plans That We Made

by BeaArthurPendragon



Series: The Devil's Afterlife [5]
Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: 12 Days of MattElektra, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angry Sex, Angst, Brooding, Christmas, Established Relationship, F/M, Fix-It, Fluff, Happy Sex, Heartbreak, Human Disaster Matt Murdock, Ice Skating, Love, Matt Murdock Likes Box, Matt Murdock Needs a Hug, Oral Sex, Origin Story, Pie, Presents, Smut, Snowmen, mattelektraweek, that wasn't a typo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-20
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-09-23 05:10:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 12,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17074028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeaArthurPendragon/pseuds/BeaArthurPendragon
Summary: “What does he want with me?”“You know what he wants,” she says, her heart beating fast but her voice calm, cool. “It’s the war. It’s always been the war.”(A reimagining of the final 12 days of Matt and Elektra's college relationship. For 12 Days of MattElektra. I'll be posting a new chapter every day through New Year's. You don't need to read the previous fics in this series to understand this.)





	1. Day 1, Thursday, 12/20: Prompt—What Living Feels Like

**Author's Note:**

> Note: A sort of prequel/flashback in the same storyline as [His Heart is a Place of Safety](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15377127/chapters/35684037) but you DON'T need to read that to understand this at all. Fills for the [12 Days of MattElektra](https://beaarthurpendragon.tumblr.com/post/180045036372/fadedtoblue-announcing-our-holiday-event) daily prompt list.
> 
> Confession: I've never been able to really buy Matt's attraction to Elektra as it was depicted during Daredevil S2—and I really hated the Roscoe Sweeney incident. The whole thing just felt so out of character to me (although I will admit that may be just because it violated _my_ headcanon). So I used the daily prompt challenge as a way to figure out what made this relationship tick. I like that it allowed me to explore a bunch of different highs and lows, sweet fun bits and naughty bits and angry bits and moody bits. I learned a lot. 
> 
> (Not-plagiarism note: A briefer version of the ice-skating scene appears in my other 12 Days of MattElektra fic, _[We Were Never Lonely And We Were Never Afraid When We Were Together](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17073581)_. I just liked the idea and wanted to expand on it here.)
> 
> Fills Daredevil Bingo square: We Have a Mutual Friend

He nearly slips the instant the blade hits the ice, but Elektra steadies him, her hands gripping his with surprising strength.

“Here, hold the rail,” she says, guiding his hand to it. She flanks him on the other side and tucks her arm up firmly under his, half-holding him up as his blades threaten to slip out from beneath him anew every time he thinks he’s found his balance. She teaches him how to angle his feet to push off the edges of his blades instead of the picks, and that helps. By the time they’re halfway around the rink he’s even got it down well enough to experimentally take his hand off the rail for a few seconds.

“Look at you,” she laughs, the delight in her voice sweeter than any candy he’s ever tasted, and he can’t help but grin. Suddenly she’s swiveled in front of him and takes his free hand. She’s comfortable skating backwards, glancing over her shoulder and back at him with practiced ease.

“Feels like you’ve done this before,” he says, a sharp stew of cold air, anxiety, and exhilaration roughening his voice.

“Ballet, figure skating, gymnastics,” she says dismissively, but he can hear the smile in her voice. “I’m a rich girl cliché.”

Matt laughs. “You’re no cliché.”

“Neither are you,” she says impishly, releasing his right hand and swiveling back to his side, and only then does he realize that she’s gradually guided him out of reach of the rail. “Time to take off those training wheels,” she says, and laughs.

The crowd thins out the closer they get to the center of the rink, and his nervousness thins out too. The sound is so weird here, a strange salad of Christmas carols and laughter and heightened heartbeats and children’s squeals and city traffic, all reflecting sharply off the smooth ice below before ping-ponging off the plexiglass barriers and vanishing into the open sky above, and he’s more lost than he wants to admit. But with less risk of running into anyone—or anyone running into him—he begins to relax into the rare joy of moving fast in public.

And fast they go, faster and faster until the rink guard whistles at Elektra to dial it down, but even after that it still feels fast, still feels like flying as they course across the ice on nothing but the edges of knives. He’s grinning openmouthed like a fool, he knows, but he can’t help it—it’s too fun, too delicious to disguise.

And then, rashly, he lets go of her hand, and he’s skating by himself, and Elektra is keeping close, he can tell, tensed and ready to redirect him if he gets too near to anyone else, but he doesn’t care, he wants this to last forever, because he’s alive right now, alive and flying, and so very, very free.

Elektra reins him in when he approaches the curve, gently guiding him around until he’s back on the straightaway before releasing him again. After six or seven laps around the rink, she draws him into a little one-revolution spin near the center of the ice and when they stop he kisses her deeply, earning them a couple of whistles and “awws” from nearby skaters that he’s more than happy to ignore.

“The look on your face right now is _everything_ ,” Electra says, smiling against his lips. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you have this much fun.”

“I never get to move this fast by myself,” Matt says, laughing and kissing her again. “It’s awesome.”

“Well then what are you waiting for?” Elektra asks, laughing and tugging on his hand.

“Wait,” Matt says, kissing her one more time. “Now I’m ready.”

Much later that night, sore from the unaccustomed movement and exhausted from the cold, they lay in bed after making love, too spent for another go but still too blissed out to stop touching each other. Matt loves the curve of her brows and the planes of her cheeks, the delicate little whorl of her ear and the long sweet slope of her lip. He could keep going but she’s sensitive everywhere right now; even the lightest touch to her neck makes her jump.

It doesn’t matter: There’s no part of her he couldn’t take pleasure in touching. She hums as he does, a sweet aching melody he later learns is a Greek Christmas carol.

“Is this how you look at me?” she asks sleepily. “Does it help you see me in your mind?”

“No,” Matt says, kissing her forehead. “I don’t see anything in my mind anymore. I don’t need to.” He lets his hand drift lightly across her cheekbone. “I know your skin feels like a—kind of like a peach. It’s smooth and a little dry, and you have—is that a little mole there?” She nods against his hand. “And I know you taste like salt,” he says, touching his tongue to her lower lip, “and copper and strawberries.” He presses his nose against the crown of her hair and breathes in deep. “And you smell like vanilla and lilies and just a little bit of sweat because you didn’t wash your hair today. It’s a smoky scent, almost, like a fireplace in winter. It’s cozy and warm and I want to wrap myself up in it forever.”

“Mmm,” Elektra murmurs, wrapping her arms around him and snuggling in close. “You make me sound so delicious.”

“Because you are.” Matt nibbles on her lower lip again and she smiles and presses her forehead to his. “And when you speak, I can feel your voice resonate through your bones, like a bell when it rings.”

 “I’m not so sure about having my head compared to a bell, Matthew,” she says with mock skepticism.

“No, it’s beautiful, trust me,” Matt protests, rubbing his nose against hers. She laughs at this and the music of it spills out between them like honey.

It was her voice he loved first, the perfect Castilian accent she spoke with in the Spanish literature elective they’d both taken the year before to meet their foreign language requirement. He’d been shocked to learn she wasn’t Spanish at all, that she speaks perfect Parisian French and posh London English just as fluently in addition to her native Athenian Greek. She’s also learning Japanese; there’s always room for more words in her head, and if she occasionally forgets which language she’s speaking and slips into a different one, what does it matter? Her voice is beautiful no matter what words it shapes.

“Thanks for today,” he says, kissing her forehead. “I can’t remember the last time I felt that alive.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stay tuned for tomorrow's prompt!


	2. Day 2, Friday, 12/21: Prompt—When We’re Married

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They talk about marriage like it’s a joke, play at it like the ironic teenagers they still are, but he can hear the sincerity in the happy skitter of her heartbeat, knows the idea of being his wife excites her.

“And what about the kids? What are we going to do with them?”

They’re sprawled out naked and sex-drunk on the enormous leather sofa of the Natchios’ Midtown penthouse where Elektra’s been living instead of the dorms. Her mother’s the Greek ambassador to Japan now, so she and Elektra’s father are only here for occasional visits—and fortunately for them, this Christmas isn’t one of them.

He’s pretty sure that there isn’t a single remaining flat surface in the place where they haven’t fucked yet in the four months they’ve been together, but is favorite is this sofa, with its deep cushions and the essential animal funk that no tanning could banish from a nose like his. Even now he can smell it, hovering just beyond the scent of her cunt still heavy on his lips, a wedge of strong expensive cheese balanced on his belly and the sharp smoky burn of the scotch in his left hand, which he didn’t even really like that much except that it made him feel tough and grown up, like his dad.

They talk about marriage like it’s a joke, play at it like the ironic teenagers they still are, but he can hear the sincerity in the happy skitter of her heartbeat, knows the idea of being his wife excites her.

It had started right before Thanksgiving, when she’d declined to join him at the Nelsons’. “Maybe next year,” she’d said. That was his first hint that she had forever in mind.

But at 22 he was still very much the angry little orphan who nobody wanted to adopt, and he’d reflexively batted away the idea. “If you’re not bored with me by then,” he said, trying and failing to sound too cool to care. Mostly, he just sounded petulant.

 “What a cruel thing to say,” she’d said softly, her heart tumbling a little as she spoke. “I love you, Matthew. Haven’t you figured that out yet?”

He hadn’t wanted to admit that he’d fallen in love with her months before, that he’d been waiting to hear her say that since the moment they met, that night at the fancy party he’d crashed with Foggy, so he’d just kissed her instead. “Say the word,” he’d said, “and I’ll take you to City Hall and make an honest woman out of you.”

“It’s too late for that,” she’d laughed, kissing him back. “But it’s nice to think about, isn’t it?”

It had been a joke—it’s still a joke, really—but they think about it all the time after that. They’re thinking about it now. They’re 22 and still playing at adulthood, trying it on for size, and it’s fun—really fun—but he still can’t decide if it’s just a daydream or a wish.

As far as he can tell, he’s successfully hidden his powers for 13 years—successfully hidden them from people who live with him, who pay close attention to him. Sharing a dorm room with Foggy has raised the stakes, he has to admit, because he has even less privacy to move the way he wants to than he had at the orphanage, but he’s found ways to adapt. Often he’ll go for walks late at night, pleading insomnia, but really it’s just an excuse for him to walk freely around the city, barely using his cane at all. Oh, he’ll hold it, tap it every once in a while for show, but at night it’s the thinnest of pretenses.

Or else he’ll take the train down to Hell’s Kitchen on a Sunday evening, the one night a week Fogwell’s closes early. He’ll catch Tyrone as he’s closing up shop for the night, pass him a $20 to have the place to himself for an hour. Tyrone doesn’t care what he does there, as long as he locks up when he leaves. He always does.

It’s not punching the heavy bag that he needs to hide from the world—it’s a fun thing to impress the girls at the university gym with—but the other things he does. The rapid-fire strike combinations that leave the bag swaying in drunken circles like a ship’s bell on rough seas. The reflex training against the wooden kung fu dummy in the corner by the window. The handsprings along the benches in the locker room and the backflips over the ropes of the ring and the quick runs through obstacle courses of plyo boxes and truck tires. It’s been nearly seven years since Stick left him, but he hasn’t forgotten what he learned, hasn’t stopped needing to feel what it makes him feel.

Strong. In control. Alive.

He’ll have to tell her someday, he knows. Not yet, not for a while—and he knows he can’t marry her until he does—but he will. He will.

Tonight’s the first time he’s broached the subject of kids. He didn’t even realize he’d wanted them until the words came out of his mouth, but now that he has, he does, more than anything. The thought’s a sharp spike in his chest and he takes a sloppy sip of the scotch to give himself an excuse to cough back the bubble of emotion that’s suddenly threatening to burst from his throat. He just wants a family again.

“Oh, I don’t know,” she says slyly, feeding him curls of some French cheese directly from the enormous chef’s knife she was using to carve the wedge. She’s playing it cool for him, but her heart is beating fast and hard. She wants it too. “Sweet little Ellie and her simpleton brother, Matthew Jr., can cook and clean and stock the fridge for us so we can use our time to do—better things.”

“Like sex?” Matt asks, pushing away the approaching knife to kiss her. She doesn’t seem to notice what he’s done, that he knew exactly where the knife was, but later he’ll wonder if that was the mistake that changed everything between them.

She laughs, her voice low and rough with anticipation. “Exactly like sex.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stay tuned for tomorrow's prompt!


	3. Day 3, Saturday, 12/22: Prompt—Winter Weather

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Have you never built a snowman?”  
> She laughs, and the melody of it rings against the windows behind them in the cold air. “I didn’t see snow until I was too old to play in it.”  
> “It doesn’t snow in Greece?”  
> “It doesn’t snow in Cambodia. My parents didn’t adopt me until I was 11.”  
> “Eleven’s hardly adult,” Matt says.  
> “Orphans grow up fast in Cambodia,” she says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wanted to explore a bit of Elektra's back story more--I assume she had a life before Stick got ahold of her, and since Elodie Yung has a Cambodian parent, I decided to run with that. See the after-notes for more on what was going on in Cambodia around the time Elektra was born.

They awake to a thick blanket of snow baffling the city like soft wool. He can hear it, the snow—not the falling, though he can feel the flakes melting on his skin and dusting his eyelashes, but the way it alters the sound of the city below Elektra’s balcony.

He’s never gotten over how quiet the city gets on mornings like this, when everyone who can stay home does and the snow muffles the sounds of the rest. Even so, some sounds are clearer in the cold air—church bells, car horns, the cries of late-migrating geese winging their way south. Even the snowpack has a sound of its own, a soft mother’s hush soothing the city back to sleep for a little while longer, an underfoot crunch almost-but-not-quite as satisfying as fall leaves.

He bends down to test its depth—four inches and still coming down hard—and scoops up a handful, quickly forming it into a ball and pitching it out over the balcony’s edge with a passable windup barely remembered from the last time he’d thrown a baseball more than a decade ago. Even he can’t hear it hit the ground from 39 stories up—it probably just fell apart in the air anyway—but it satisfies the little boy in him all the same, and he smiles.

“It’s freezing here,” Elektra murmurs, drawing open the sliding glass door. “I was wondering where you’d gone.”

“Thought I’d build a snowman,” Matt says. “Got any carrots?”

“Carrots?”

“Have you never built a snowman?”

She laughs, and the melody of it rings against the windows behind them in the cold air. “I didn’t see snow until I was too old to play in it.”

“It doesn’t snow in Greece?”

“It doesn’t snow in Cambodia. My parents didn’t adopt me until I was 11.”

“Eleven’s hardly adult,” Matt says.

“Orphans grow up fast in Cambodia,” she says. She touches his cheek when she speaks, and suddenly she sounds much, much older than 22. He turns his face to kiss her palm.

 _Orphans grow up fast everywhere_ , he wants to say, but he knows that’s just his own self-pity bubbling up, that he can’t pretend their lives have been the same. “Well then,” he says, rubbing her hand between both of his to warm it up. “Go put on a coat. It’s high time you learned how to be a kid.”

An hour later, they’re in Central Park and working on packing the second giant snowball for their snowman when Elektra begins to talk. She doesn’t look at Matt, doesn’t look at anything but the snow in her hands.

“My name used to be Anchali,” she says.

She lived in a hot, damp one-room apartment with her mother in a sprawling slum in the capital. She never knew her mother’s name.

She has only a few memories of home, but love and loss had kept them sharp. There was a cracked tile floor, mustard yellow and decorated with brown flowers, and a small avocado-green electric fan that she liked to feed little strips of banana leaf into so she could hear it tick against the blades like a playing card stuck into the spokes of a bicycle wheel. There were the brightly batiked curtains she liked to play with as they rippled in a breeze and the bed they shared, a stuffed-cotton mattress on a low frame so narrow they had to sleep spooning on their sides, no matter how hot and humid it got in the summer. She can’t remember her mother’s voice anymore, but she remembers scraps of the little songs she used to sing as she cooked or washed their clothes. Elektra hums a bit as she works.

Her mother had a little jewelry—a small stack of thin gold bangles that she always wore, and that Elektra thought was proof that they were rich. She liked to play with the bangles on her wrist, listening to them clink. She never learned how her mother died, just knew that one afternoon their neighbor, her mother’s friend, had come flying out to the courtyard where Elektra was playing with the other children, pressed the bangles into her hand, and told her not to lose them, no matter what happened next.

What happened next was something she didn’t like to talk about, saying only that she was taken to a place “that wasn’t a good place for little girls” before finding a home with the Natchios family.  

“Oh, El,” Matt says, his voice heavy in his throat.

“Don’t feel sorry for me,” Elektra says softly, with a nonchalance he knows she doesn’t feel.

“I don’t. I’m just sorry it happened at all.”

“And I’m sorry you lost your sight and your father and nobody ever wanted to adopt you, but shit happens, Matthew,” she says. “Now please tell me what on earth I’m supposed to do with this fucking snowball before my hands freeze off.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> According to the always 100% accurate (lol) internet, "Anchali" means "gift" or "hand," which, if true, seemed appropriate. 
> 
> Also, for context: She would have been born during the years after Vietnam overthrew the Khmer Rouge, which had for the previous 5 years orchestrated one of the worst genocides in the 20th century. Vietnam established an occupation force afterward, and it would have been in that environment that Anchali was born. It would have been, to say the least, a very chaotic time to be _anyone_ there--but most of all a little girl without anyone looking out for her. 
> 
> Stay tuned for tomorrow's prompt!


	4. Day 4, Sunday, 12/23: Prompt—Mistletoe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elektra doesn’t give a shit about any of that—and now that he understands the kind of childhood she had, he understands why she has no pity for him, or for anyone else. And yes, maybe it makes her cold at times, and it definitely makes her a snob, but he doesn’t mind. Because if he’s going to be honest, he feels exactly the same way—surrounded by soft, helpless fools with no real understanding of pain or loss. He and Elektra may have been forged in different crucibles, to be sure, but they both carry the same mark that means they’re made of stronger metal than most, and that gives them certain privileges.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is spectacularly explicit, for those of you reading in public.  
> Duane Reade is the name of a New York City drugstore chain.

It’s two in the afternoon and they’re standing in the middle of Duane Reade, and Matt just wants to die.

Buying condoms is never not excruciating for Matt, not the least because it entails dragging Foggy along to read the labels for him—or worse, asking a floor associate for help—but having Elektra there to do it instead is its own kind of weird.

Mostly because it feels very capital-A-adult, standing there as a Couple Being Smart and Choosing Safe Sex and all that, when in truth they’re still really just barely not teenagers anymore, both flushed and jumpy as Elektra goes through the inventory rack by rack in as quiet and dignified a voice as she can manage.

“Cherry flavored, no; ribbed, no; oh, how about magnum, big boy?”

“Extra-thin,” he says quickly.

“You’re not very thin,” Elektra says, and finally a giggle breaks through because this conversation is transpiring unbearably beneath a bank of buzzing fluorescent lights uncomfortably close to an entire rack of hemorrhoid treatments. Even sealed away, the lidocaine and witch hazel burn inside his nose. It’s not as bad as the toothpaste aisle, thank God, but bad enough.

“Extra-thin latex,” Matt croaks, because somehow despite every disgusting chemical smell screaming for his attention when all he wants to smell is Elektra’s perfume, his dick is getting hard and all he wants to do is get the fuck out of the store and work his way through an entire sleeve of the damn things with her. “Feels nicer.”

She turns to him and smiles. “Well, all right then,” she says, plucking all four boxes off the rack. “Might as well get them all, right?”

“I’ll buy as many as it takes for us to get out of this store right now,” Matt murmurs into her ear.

She laughs and takes his arm and they get into what turns out to be an agonizingly long line to check out. Elektra amuses him by reading a tabloid to him—Julia Roberts is pregnant with triplets, Justin Timberlake has left his wife to run off to Vegas with Britney Spears, the governor of Florida was abducted by an alien.

“That last one could actually be true,” Matt jokes as she replaces the newspaper, and she giggles again. It’s nice to hear her laugh after yesterday.

Suddenly Elektra’s hands are curled around the lapels of his coat and she’s kissing him passionately. Everyone in the store is staring at them, the beautiful girl (he knows people find her so) and the blind boy with a cane in one hand and four boxes of condoms barely secured in the other, and he knows all they can do is wonder how the hell _that_ happened.

He opens his mouth to ask her the same thing, but she just tips his face up toward the ceiling and kisses his chin. “Mistletoe,” she says happily, pressing her breasts against his chest as she speaks and god, he can feel her nipples harden through both her sweater and her coat. “I’ve always wanted to do that.”

Behind them, an old man clears his throat and swears. “Get a room.”

And they do.

They rush back to Elektra’s apartment as fast as they dare across icy sidewalks, finally bursting inside in a storm of giggles and kisses as they tear each other’s clothes off. The cane, the condoms, the coats all scatter across the hall floor while they make their way into the living room, peeling off the rest of their things.

Matt loves being naked with her, loves showing off his body to her, the muscles he works hard to build, the strength he’s so proud of. _Fuck your pity_ , he likes to think it says. _I can still kick your ass._

And Elektra gets it. She’s the only woman he’s ever been with who’s never patronizingly kissed his eyes in a moment of tenderness, who’s never treated him like some helpless virgin she has to initiate into the ways of love, who’s never handled him like a half-broken thing that needs protecting.

Elektra doesn’t give a shit about any of that—and now that he understands the kind of childhood she had, he understands why she has no pity for him, or for anyone else. And yes, maybe it makes her cold at times, and it definitely makes her a snob, but he doesn’t mind. Because if he’s going to be honest, he feels exactly the same way—surrounded by soft, helpless fools with no real understanding of pain or loss. He and Elektra may have been forged in different crucibles, to be sure, but they both carry the same mark that means they’re made of stronger metal than most, and that gives them certain privileges.

Like standing naked in a luxuriously appointed penthouse with a heavy Waterford crystal glass of scotch in one hand as a beautiful woman with hair like thick, heavy silk and skin like peaches kneels before him with his cock in her mouth, her breasts heavy and erect pressed against his thighs, her hands grasping his ass with the strength of the drowning, pulling him as far inside her as he can go.

He drinks and plays with her hair as she sucks and licks the naked length of him, and his belly trembles and his breath goes ragged and his knees want to buckle, but they don’t, because he’s not just anyone, he’s stronger than that, and he’s going to stand here in front of these uncurtained windows overlooking a city he hasn’t seen in 13 years because he wants _them_ to see, all of them, how powerful he really is. He’s not even ashamed of how crude the desire is; Elektra loves this side of him, loves to feed it, and God, does he love to be fed.

He comes into her mouth with a stuttering gasp, all the desire in his heart flooding out through his belly and into her. He lets the empty glass drop; it shatters on the floor beside them but they don’t care; she’s laughing and the vibrations of her voice are like earthquakes against his skin.

She finally releases him and pulls away with a murmured “don’t move” before padding into the kitchen closet for a broom and dustpan, and it’s the stuff of a thousand cheap fantasies to know this beautiful naked woman is cleaning up the broken glass around him.

For that, she gets a reward. There’s a massive leather ottoman that doubles as a coffee table, and he lays her out flat on that, kissing her breasts while gently circling her clit with one finger. She’s already wet, already ready to go, and so he kisses his way down her belly with agonizing slowness, pausing to lick the sensitive rim of her navel before reaching the short dense thatch of hair he’s delighted that she refuses to shave (“Why would I want to look like a _child_ , Matthew?”) because it smells more like _her_ than any other part of her body. He drinks in the scent of her, revels in the tickle of it against his nose and lips, before probing his way through with his tongue to the delicate hood of her labia.

She gasps as he does, and he can’t help but smile; no blow job in the world can make him feel more like a man than this right here. He quests a bit with his tongue to find her clit, engorged and sweet as a pomegranate seed, and for a moment he pauses there to enjoy it, her pulse against his tongue, and knows in that moment he’s the only man on earth who can feel this. She sighs heavily and lifts her hips up against him hungrily; he plays with her clit with the tip of his tongue before thrusting it up inside her cunt, and God, she is delicious. He explores inside her, as deep as he can go, stretching for the tender little spot that drives her mad, hitching up her hips so he can reach it, and when he feels her getting close, bucking and gasping with desire, he withdraws his tongue and sucks hard on her clit until she screams with release and splashes his chin with her cum.

He laughs breathlessly and heaves himself up on the ottoman next to her and threads his fingers through hers. She turns on her side toward him and kisses his temple and heart’s begun to slow but it’s steady and happy and true. She threads her arm across his chest and curls up close against him, nuzzling her nose into the curve of his neck. “I could spend a lifetime just smelling your skin,” she says, kissing his shoulder.

“And I could spend a lifetime with the taste of you in my mouth,” Matt says, turning to face her.

She kisses him gently and licks his bottom lip. “I could get used to that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the chapter when I finally started to understand what made this relationship tick. Stay tuned for tomorrow's prompt!


	5. Day 5, Monday, 12/24: Prompt—Gold Rings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “This isn’t—an engagement ring, is it, Matthew?” she asks tentatively.  
> “It can be whatever you want it to be,” he says.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come to the Nelsons’ with me tomorrow?” Matt asks the next evening. They’re eating Thai takeout, mostly so Matt can show off to Elektra how well he’s learned to use chopsticks.

“Maybe next year,” she says, a smile softening the words as she reaches across the table to adjust his grip. “Like that. Better leverage.”

“Okay,” Matt says, snapping the chopsticks toward her—toward an empty pocket of air three inches to the right of her shoulder, to be precise—before returning to his noodles. “I just don’t like the idea of you spending Christmas alone.”

“Matthew, half my life is smiling and making nice at parties with people I’ve never met before. Believe me when I say spending Christmas alone sounds like a perfect treat.”

“Still.” He reaches over to touch the soft cashmere scarf she’s gotten him—red, she says, to brighten up his black winter coat—and rubs a bit of the soft wool between his fingers. It smells faintly of her perfume, he realizes with delight.

“Still, what? Go, enjoy the holiday with your family, Matthew!” she insists, rubbing his knee under the table. “It’s okay, really. I’m going to sleep in and take a long bath and drink wine and read a cheesy romance novel. Honestly, it’s going to be lovely.”

“All right,” Matt says, nodding toward her in defeat. He reaches into the pocket of his jacket, slung over the back of his chair. “I got you a little something.”

He pushes a small box across the table toward her. “It’s nothing fancy,” he says unnecessarily. He knows that she knows the small inheritance his father left him is barely a fraction of her wealth. Still, for a brief moment, though he rarely wishes this anymore, he wishes he could see her face when she opens it.

“Oh, Matthew,” she says happily, carefully peeling the paper away. Then she’s silent for an alarming minute before she reaches in and works the small gold ring out of the foam that holds it in place inside the box. It’s only 10 karat gold and he’s sure she can tell, but to his relief she doesn’t seem to mind. “This symbol is Irish, right?”

“It’s a claddagh,” Matt says, smiling shyly. “The hands stand for friendship, the heart for love, and the crown for loyalty.”

“This isn’t—an engagement ring, is it, Matthew?” she asks tentatively.

“It can be whatever you want it to be,” he says. “Give me your hands. I’ll show you.”

She does, and he slides the ring onto her right ring finger, with the crown pointing toward her hand. “That means you’re single,” he says, sliding the ring back off and turning it around. “And that way means you’re in a relationship. If you wear it on other hand, it means engaged this way, and married that way.”

He puts the ring in his palm and holds it out toward her. “You can wear it however you want.”

She takes it and holds it for a moment before sliding the ring onto her right finger and guiding his hand to hers so he can feel which direction she’s chosen. In a _relationship_.

He smiles and lets out a long, confused breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. Part of him is relieved, of course—at 22 he has no idea what marriage is, what it would look like for them—but the other part, maybe even the larger part, is a little sad. Their jokes about “when we’re married” hadn’t entirely been a joke to him, not really. Up until now, it had only felt like a question of when, not if. Now he wonders if he’d read it wrong all along.

“Were you afraid I’d put it on my left?” she asks with a small laugh, and he shrugs.

“I told you it was your decision,” he says, hoping his smile reads as genuine.

She takes his hands in hers and kisses them. “Maybe next year.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm actually not sure that changing the direction/hand you put the ring on really does matter (someone actually Irish please weigh in!) but it's just the kind of sweet, romantic symbolism I can see Matt buying into. 
> 
> Stay tuned for tomorrow's prompt!


	6. Day 6, Tuesday,12/25: Prompt—Free Choice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by this line from DDS2 "One more thing, and this is the dealbreaker: you have to give me back that pie."

It’s nearly seven o’clock before he can finally disengage from the Nelson clan’s family Christmas dinner in the back room of the butcher shop. Foggy’s family is enormous: He’s the oldest of four, but he’s got three older half-siblings from his dad’s first marriage, and they’re here tonight too, plus two sisters-in-law, one niece, one nephew, and two more on the way, not to mention both sets of grandparents, one aunt, her husband, and her daughter.

Eight years in an orphanage has left him accustomed to eating with a crowd, but the Nelsons are affectionate and solicitous in a way that the nuns never were, and that he and his fellow strays had never learned to be. The Nelsons are just one huge puppy pile of a family—they hug and kiss and snuggle without a second thought—and he loves it, he really does, but it’s also suffocating, and by the time the dessert plates have been cleared and the whiskey poured, it’s getting harder and harder to remain polite.  

Finally, he’s had enough. “I love your family, Fog, but I really need to not speak to anyone else for about 24 hours,” Matt says ruefully as Foggy hands him his coat, and Foggy laughs.

“Well, you’re not leaving emptyhanded, Matt,” Anna Nelson interrupts, pressing a grocery bag full of to-go containers into his hands. “The box with three rubber bands is ham. Two rubber bands is glazed carrots. One rubber band is green beans. No rubber bands is the colcannon you liked. The zip bag’s got soda bread and the foil container is pie.”

“Got it,” Matt says, and despite his eagerness to flee, he can’t help but smile when Anna sends him off with a kiss on each cheek and a hug strong enough to defibrillate a stopped heart.

“You don’t need to wait for Foggy to invite you if you ever want a home-cooked meal, okay?” she says sternly. “Just show up. There’s always room for one more at the Nelson table.”

“Let him go, Ma,” Foggy laughs. “Proper care and feeding of your introvert, remember? We discussed this.”

Anna laughs and kisses Matt one more time and squeezes his arm for good measure. Part of him _wants_ to stay, wants to bask in the sunshine of this maternal love for as long as Anna’s willing to give it, but if one more Nelson touches him or puts something into his hand or tries to guide him somewhere without asking, he’s afraid he’s going to throw a punch. He’ll have to talk to Foggy about laying down some more ground rules with his family later, but right now, the better part of valor is to make his goodbyes with a smile and then get the fuck out of Dodge.

When he arrives at Elektra’s 20 minutes later, he lets himself into the apartment and leans against the door with a sigh.

One look at him is all Elektra needs to know he’s all touched out. “You, hot bath and whiskey, stat,” she says, relieving him of his cane and the food with a minimum of contact. “What’d you bring me?”

Matt grins, shrugging off his coat gratefully. “Pie.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stay tuned for tomorrow's prompt!


	7. Day 7, Wednesday, 12/26: Prompt—A Sexy Place to Hide

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Boarding schools are breeding grounds for depravity, Matthew,” Elektra laughed, sending the cart rolling across the room with a careless shove. “You should brush up on your Colette.” 
> 
> Matt laughs and allows her to guide him toward the ring. She swings up into the ring easily and leans over the ropes so far that her hair brushes his face. “How does a blind man box, anyway?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Buckle up--here's where we really start diverging from the canon.

It all falls apart the next day. It’s Boxing Day, Elektra informs him—not a Greek thing, but something she picked up during her British boarding school years—and so of course, here they are at Fogwell’s in order to defile it in the most wonderful way possible. It’s four hours past closing time but Elektra, to Matt’s surprise, knows how to pick locks.

“You pick that up in boarding school, too?” he asks, deliberately walking right into a towel cart. The more time they spend together, the harder it is for him to remember what blindness is for her, what he needs to do to hide his abilities. He’s not quite ready to tell her what he can do yet.

“Boarding schools are breeding grounds for depravity, Matthew,” Elektra laughed, sending the cart rolling across the room with a careless shove. “You should brush up on your Colette.”

Matt laughs and allows her to guide him toward the ring. She swings up into the ring easily and leans over the ropes so far that her hair brushes his face. “How does a blind man box, anyway?”

“Don’t patronize me,” he says curtly, a cold freeze radiating up through his chest and belly. She knows something and he knows it—he’s made a mistake somewhere and oh, God, this is going to be bad.

“I’m not, Matthew,” she says, and her heart beats steadily in her truth. “I’ve been watching you. How you move, how you— _are_. You’re so much more than you let on.”

“Oh?” he asks, but he says a brief silent prayer and accepts her hand—the hand he shouldn’t possibly know she’s holding out to him—and climbs into the ring to face her.

“Tell me how you could do that,” she says, and he can hear the smile in her voice.

“It’s complicated,” he says, then quickly ducks as she aims a roundhouse kick directly at his face. “Tell me how _you_ could do that,” he says.

She doesn't reply--just takes another swing. He dodges her with a handspring, partly because he feels like showing off, but mostly because it’s the quickest way to get far enough out of reach for him to pull his thoughts together. The only reason she catches him by surprise is because she’s the one throwing the punches—but he knows these strike combinations, knows this footwork by heart. "Come get me," she teases. 

“Anger is a spark,” he says. “Is that what he told you? Anger is a spark, but rage is a wildfire—out of control and not worth shit.”

She laughs and leans back against the ropes as she regards him for a moment, then laughs bitterly. “I have to admit I couldn’t understand what it was he wanted with you, anyway. I’m embarrassed I didn’t see it sooner.”

He closes the distance between them in three long, fast strides, backing her into the corner post and pinning her arms to her side. “What _does_ he want with me?”

“You know what he wants,” she says, her heart beating fast but her voice calm, cool. “It’s the war. It’s always been the war.”

“Fuck his fake war,” Matt says, letting her go roughly and taking a step back. “That’s just bullshit he feeds to lonely kids to make them feel special. Tell me, how much bullshit did _you_ feed me? Is Elektra even your real name?”

“Yes. And before that it was Anchali. Stick took me in after my mother died and he trained me to fight,” she says. Her heart is as steady as a drum—she’s not lying.

“He took you somewhere that was bad for little girls.”

“The Chaste is an army, not a convent, Matthew. He placed me with the Natchios family to keep me safe, until I was old enough to fight the Hand alongside him. And now you are, too,” she said. She takes a tentative step forward, her hands out to her side in surrender. “I know it sounds mad, but it’s all true, Matthew.”

“I believe that he raised you to believe it’s true,” he says.

“If you’re talking about K’un Lun and the dragon—I don’t know. What I do know is that the Hand is the most powerful organized crime syndicate in the world, and that the Chaste is the only organization strong enough to fight them. Come fight them with me.”

Matt laughs, but there’s no joy in it—just disappointment, confusion, and rage. “So, let me guess: He sends you to me as a honey trap, someone to raise the stakes enough to change my mind. Is that it?”

“Yes,” she whispers. “I wasn’t supposed to fall in love with you, but I did. And I do. I love you even now.”

He grabs her again and crushes her in a painful, lip-bloodying kiss.

“The sad part about it is that I still love you too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stay tuned for tomorrow's prompt!


	8. Day 8, Thursday, 12/27: Prompt—Fireplace

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the first time in his life, he has no idea what he’s supposed to do. Maybe Stick’s war was real, maybe it wasn’t. K’un Lun, the Hand, the Chaste—even when he was 12, it had sounded like nothing more than the plot of a bad cartoon. And now he has to decide whether he’s willing to follow Elektra into the alternate universe they both apparently been invited to inhabit. It’s an insane choice—but he’s never considered that it might also be a real one.

He’d left her in the ring at Fogwell’s pleading for him to stay, to let her explain, to remember that she loved him.

Back in his dorm, blessedly empty except for a few international and scholarship students who couldn’t afford to go home for the holidays, he sat in the room that he and Foggy shared and wept.

Though Foggy had decamped to his parents’ home for the holidays two weeks before, the room still smelled like him. He briefly wondered if Foggy could be another one of Stick’s plants in his life.

He quickly brushed it away as the absurdity it was—he’d just had a shock, is all, and he couldn’t let his doubt infect everything else that was good about his life. Like a true friend. Foggy hadn’t liked Elektra much the few times he’d met her; they’d been cordial for Matt’s sake, of course, but he could tell there was no warmth between them. He knew Foggy would never volunteer his true thoughts about her, but he didn’t need to. It’s why Matt had never asked.

Perhaps he should have. Perhaps he would have seen her game sooner if he had.

He sleeps past noon, but the next day, his anxiety is as sharp as ever. He needs to move—wants to run, but the campus gym is closed over the holiday, and he’s not about to chance a jog anywhere else but a treadmill, so he does what every New Yorker with an unquiet mind and unfilled hours to endure does: He puts on a warm coat, and goes for a walk.

Two days after Christmas, the city is mostly back to work, but nobody’s heart is in it—everyone is just putting in the hours until New Year’s and the last holiday for a long, long time. There’s still snow on the ground but at least the sidewalks are clear, and so he makes his way across campus to 116th Street, gets an egg and cheese on a roll from the cart outside the subway stop, and heads down into Riverside Park.

This is his favorite park in the city, this four-mile strip of forested green along the western edge of the city. They’re close enough to the ocean here that the Hudson courses north with the tide, more salt than fresh, but still fresh enough for floes of ice to form and creak along its surface. He can hear a Coast Guard patrol boat making its rounds around the city, no doubt keeping its eye out for anyone stupid enough to try to navigate this mess.

In a city of nearly nine million people, there will always be someone stupid enough to try anything.

A jogger passes him, then another, and he bites back his envy and walks. He walks until his legs and nose grow numb, and even the soft wool lining his boots lose the ability to keep the frozen pavement’s chill away. But still he walks.

For the first time in his life, he has no idea what he’s supposed to do. Maybe Stick’s war was real, maybe it wasn’t. K’un Lun, the Hand, the fucking Chaste—even when he was 12, it had sounded like nothing more than the plot of a bad cartoon. And now he has to decide whether he’s willing to follow Elektra into the alternate universe they both apparently been invited to inhabit. It’s an insane choice, but he’s never considered that it might also be a real one.

Eventually he reaches the end of the park and begins to make his way into Hell’s Kitchen. The familiarity of the streets twists something in his chest—home and not-home, where the streets are his but none of the doors are. He could have dropped in to visit the Nelsons, maybe, or paid a visit to St. Michael’s to warm up, but that would only summon more questions than he wants to—or can—answer right now.

So he keeps walking through Hell’s Kitchen and further down into the city, letting his mind roam with his steps in the hopes that an answer will magically bubble up, before finally parking at a diner near the ferry terminal for several hours to pick at a burger and allow himself to properly thaw. He’s got two missed calls, one from Elektra, who didn’t leave a message, and one from Foggy, who wanted to know if he wanted to meet up for drinks. He doesn’t return either call.

Instead, he sits in his booth and turns his questions over and over fruitlessly in his mind until the diner closes. He still doesn’t have an answer, but he’s run out of island to walk, so he pays his bill, heads to the nearest subway station, and heads back to home.

But even after a hot shower and a change of clothes, he can’t settle down, so he collects his comforter and the Braille edition of Marcus Aurelius’ _Meditations_ that Father Lantom had given him as a high school graduation present, and heads out to the common room to read.

The dormitory is 100 years old, and in some ways it reminds him of St. Michael’s, all creaking floors and ancient wood polish. The best part, though, is the fireplace set into the far wall. It had been updated with gas longs at some point, and a plexiglass shield installed to keep drunk students from setting the whole building aflame, but it still gives off a pleasant heat and makes enough of a crackle to feel cozy.

He curls up on the sofa nearest the fire, and opens the book at random. Already the warmth is seeping into his bones and his head’s beginning to nod, but he manages to read a few lines before he drifts to sleep.

_All things are changing: and thou thyself art in continuous mutation and in a manner in continuous destruction, and the whole universe too._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stay tuned for tomorrow's prompt!


	9. Day 9, Friday, 12/28: Prompt—It Was Worth It

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You look like a young man with a busy mind tonight, Matthew,” Father Lantom says suddenly, startling Matt out of his reverie. Communion’s a moot question now because Mass is over and the sanctuary empty. “Want to talk about it?”
> 
> Matt winces and shakes his head. “Just girl trouble,” he says.

After another restless day of thinking and trying not to think and walking and walking and walking, he finds himself at 5 o’clock services at St. Michael’s and doubting for the first time in his life if he should take Communion. His last confession had been right before Christmas, and aside from the premarital sex—which Father Lantom was always willing to give a pass on—there technically wasn’t anything on his ledger he hadn’t accounted for. And yet it seemed that communion with Christ seemed fundamentally incompatible with the fact that he might seriously be considering _following his girlfriend to join a mystical army to fight evil_.

Well, it was no weirder than the Book of Revelations, he reasoned. _And there was war in Heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought, and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in Heaven._

He knew better than to indulge in the kind of Hallmark-card theology that asserted they could be the same dragon—the people of K’un Lun, if they even existed, no more believed in St. Michael than he believed in the Iron Fist. But even if they were the same dragon—even if this was a story so ancient that its differences were merely errors in translation accreted over centuries of telling—it _still wasn’t real_. Matt knew better than to take the Bible literally, too.

For 13 years he’d been asking God why He’d made him the way he was, why He’d taken his sight and replaced it with powers he couldn’t understand and didn’t dare use in public. Was Elektra’s insane proposition His answer? Was it really any less impossible than anything else that had happened in his life?

“You look like a young man with a busy mind tonight, Matthew,” Father Lantom says suddenly, startling Matt out of his reverie. Communion’s a moot question now because Mass is over and the sanctuary empty. “Want to talk about it?”

Matt winces and shakes his head. “Just girl trouble,” he says.

“More trouble than usual, from the look on your face,” Lantom says. “I hope she’s worth it.”

“She is,” Matt says.

“Well, my door’s always open,” Lantom says, patting his shoulder. “Walk you out?”

“I know the way,” Matt says, deliberately misunderstanding his offer. Lantom worries about him, he knows—he always has—and all he wants was to give Matt a few more moments’ opportunity to unburden himself. But that’s an opportunity Matt can’t afford to give, and so he leaves alone.

Outside the church, Matt finally returns Foggy’s call from yesterday, and 15 minutes later, Foggy’s meeting him at the church gate and they’re on their way to Josie’s.

It’s still happy hour, so the bar is crowded, but Foggy snags them a two-top in a relatively quiet corner beyond the dart board, and they sit there for hours.

Foggy does most of the talking, like he always does. The story of the moment, and the reason he’d called Matt last night in the first place, is that yesterday his usually shy, painfully awkward little brother Liam, not quite 14 and the brooding black sheep of the ebullient Nelson clan, had come down to dinner, waited until most of the family was at the table, and stood on his chair to solemnly announce that he was gay. He’d immediately burst into tears and fled to his room, and it had taken Foggy’s parents nearly half an hour to calm him down and reassure him that everything was okay, that of course they loved him however God had made him, that they were still and always would be proud of their son. 

“Poor kid,” Matt says. “Is he okay?”

“Now? Sure. But it just pisses me off that he couldn’t just say it. I knew he wasn’t a happy kid—I wonder if I should have just said something to him, opened the door for him a little, you know?” Foggy’s gesturing angrily with his beer, and Matt’s doing everything he can to pretend not to know Foggy’s about to knock his folded-up cane right off the table. Which he does, and swears, and apologizes, and then ducks down to pick it up, and slams it down on the table angrily. “Kids shouldn’t be made to feel like they have to hide who they are.”

It’s the closest that Matt has ever come to telling Foggy everything. He’s so close that his mouth is open and the words “There’s something I need to tell you” are dancing on his tongue. But the moment passes and he swallows the words, and instead he just says, “No, they shouldn’t.”

And then they’ve moved on, and Foggy is talking about taking Liam to see _Lord of the Rings_ at the multiplex on 35th and running into the blonde political science major he’d had low-grade flirtation with all semester, Darcy or Marcy or something, who’d not-so-casually asked which capstone seminar he was going to be in next semester before giving him her number and joining her girlfriends to see _Legally Blonde_ in the theater next door.

He doesn’t ask about Elektra and Matt doesn’t offer—for once, Foggy’s dislike of her is a blessing. There’s a Jets game on the television and Foggy narrates the action for Matt, and they drink until they’re both more drunk than either of them intended to get.

Fortunately, the Nelson home is just five blocks away, and Matt is wasted enough not to argue with Foggy’s invitation to stay over. His parents are asleep by the time they arrive, and they stumble up the stairs and just barely manage to get their coats and shoes off before they collapse into Foggy’s childhood bed together and pass out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stay tuned for tomorrow's prompt!


	10. Day 10, Saturday, 12/29: Prompt—We’re Together

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I didn’t think you’d come back,” she says, opening the door for him. It’s almost eleven, but she’s still dressed for her day. Cold pours off him into the apartment and she shivers from the nearness of him as he shrugs out of his coat.
> 
> “I still haven’t decided if I have,” he says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, this one's kind of cheating--there's not much Elektra in this one at all. Sometimes a story gets in the way of a good prompt. Never fear--she'll be back. Carry on.

After the commotion with Liam the day before, Anna Nelson doesn’t bat an eye when she lets herself into Foggy’s room around eleven the next morning and discovers Matt and Foggy tangled up fully clothed in the same bed.

“Good morning, sunshines,” she says, gently shaking them awake. “You both smell like the bastard offspring of an ashtray and a beer keg. Showers. Now.”

“Mom, we’re not—” Foggy starts, but then his capacity for language collapses and he just grunts.

“Hungover, you most certainly are,” she says briskly. “The rest, I don’t care. Now up with you both so I can strip this bed before I have to burn this mattress.”

An hour later they’re both downstairs, damp and clean, demolishing plates of eggs, hash browns, and bacon alongside the rest of the Nelson clan while trying not to wince too obviously at the volume of the conversation. Matt’s drowning in one of Foggy’s t-shirts and a pair of flannel pajama pants while Anna washes the smoke out of last night’s clothes, and he’s halfway through his meal before he realizes that he’s left his glasses upstairs with his backpack. But if anyone notices, he can’t tell. He’s too bleary to keep up with the conversation, so he doesn’t even try; he just eats his brunch and drinks about a gallon of orange juice and lets his attention dip in and out of Edward and Theo’s discussions about partnering with an upstate farm to become a distribution site for an organic CSA next summer and Candace quizzing Liam earnestly about how the _Lord of the Rings_ movie compared to the book and Anna buzzing around about them all, keeping them well fed and hydrated and caffeinated and kissing each one of them as she makes her rounds, even Matt.  

He’s exhausted and hungover and utterly unmoored over Elektra and right now he loves the Nelsons so much his heart could burst. He helps himself to another glass of orange juice to quell the quiver that threatens his jaw. _Don’t you dare cry, Murdock, you pussy_.

After brunch Foggy takes him into the living room and throws on _Gladiator_ while they wait for Matt’s clothes to dry. Matt’s lying on his back on one length of the sectional while Foggy’s curled up perpendicularly, their heads converging on the same throw pillow. He starts to describe the action but Matt stops him with a grunt—keeping up with the dialogue is about all he can manage right now.

As it turns out, just staying awake is more than either of them can manage, and it’s nearly five before Anna rouses them again. “Stay for dinner, Matt?” she asks, pressing his clean clothes into his hands.

“No, thank you,” he says. “I’ll get out of your hair.”

“It’s no trouble, Matt,” Anna says, but Foggy just draws a finger across his throat to tell her to back off. _Care and feeding of introverts, Ma. We discussed this_.

But Matt surprises even himself when he changes his mind and says yes. He says yes to dinner and he says yes to dessert and he even says yes to a game of Trivial Pursuit with Candace and Theo. Even quiet little Liam volunteers to join in, shyly appointing himself as Matt’s helper so Foggy can actually play for himself for a change.

Matt realizes with a pang that Liam’s right, that never once in the dozens of times that he’s visited the Nelsons has Foggy ever had a chance to just be with his family, that his concern has only ever been managing Matt’s experience, while all he’s ever offered in return is lie after lie after lie.

The second pang comes about half a minute later when Matt realizes how different Liam is tonight. He’s still very much the reserved, serious boy he’s always been, but he’s less guarded now, less withdrawn. Even his heartbeat seems more relaxed, less prone to anxious skitters into one corner or another when he fears he’s said too much. It turns out this sullen little cipher is actually a sweet goofball with a wicked sense of humor. His mask is off, Matt realizes. He may not be ready to throw it away for good, but at least he doesn’t need it here anymore. It shows.

Meanwhile, Foggy’s having the time of his life. The Nelson siblings have always been tight, but budding adulthood has made them even more so, and Foggy loves that his best friend seems to get along so well with them.

God, he can’t be here anymore, can’t keep smiling and lying to this beautiful perfect family like this. He lets Foggy win as quickly as he can, and then immediately makes his excuses and leaves. He even declines Foggy’s offer to hail him a cab or walk him to the train.

Because by the time Foggy closes the door behind him, he knows he’s not going back uptown. He turns up his collar against the cold and heads east toward 7th Avenue, toward the one person in the world he doesn’t need to wear a mask for.

“I didn’t think you’d come back,” she says, opening the door for him. It’s almost eleven, but she’s still dressed for her day. Cold pours off him into the apartment and she shivers from the nearness of him as he shrugs out of his coat.

“I still haven’t decided if I have,” he says.

“Well, we’re together for now, anyway.”

She makes tea and they sit at her table. She places his mug next to his hand and lightly guides his fingers to the handle like she used to, though she knows now it’s not necessary. He doesn’t drink, just holds the cup in his hands to warm them. They don’t talk.

But eventually he lifts the cooling cup and drinks. “If I come with you, what would I have to do?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stay tuned for tomorrow's prompt!


	11. Day 11, Sunday, 12/30:  Heartbeats

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “How many people have you killed?” he asks, and from the catch of her breath he knows the answer isn’t zero.
> 
> “It’s a war against immortality, Matthew,” she says, catching his bottom lip and biting it. “People die.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another seriously NSFW chapter for those of you reading in public.

Ten blocks away, he can hear St. Patrick’s Cathedral toll midnight. The sound carries easily through the cold, clear night; even Elektra hears it.

“Stick needs our help,” she says. “He’s in Argentina. A Hand general named Bakuto has been trying to cook up a coup there ever since the peso crashed and Stick’s trying to stop it.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Matt asks, even though he can hear how steadily her heart is beating, how true her words are.

“Like I said, Matthew. It sounds mad, but it’s not,” Elektra says, sipping her tea.

“I can’t just pick up and go to Argentina. Spring semester starts in nine days. I don’t even have a passport.” God, he’s talking like she’s just asked him to go backpacking in South America for a lark, not fight some clandestine war.

“If everything goes right, you’ll be back by then.” She pushes an envelope he hadn’t noticed sitting on the table before toward him. He opens it and takes out a small, smooth booklet, its cover embossed with three words and a seal. He runs his fingertips across the letters: PASSPORT / UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. “It’s not your real name, of course, but it’s clean. I used your student ID photo.”

Matt tosses the passport back to her. She lets it fall on the table. “This is illegal.”

“Sometimes the law isn’t equal to the demands of justice, Matthew. Sometimes you have to find another way.”

Matt rubs his face and leans back against the table with a heavy sigh. “The point of having a system is that it’s an agreement about what kind of society we want to have. That doesn’t mean the system is perfect--God knows it isn’t--but we can’t just decide to go out and decide to singlehandedly remake the world into what _we_ think it should be without the consent of the people who live in it, Elektra. Benevolent dictators are still dictators.”

“You don’t actually believe that, Matthew.”

“I’d be a shitty lawyer if I didn’t.”

Elektra purses her lips and nods. She carefully lifts the passport by the edges and carries it over to her father’s safe, mounted in the wall beneath the footwell of his desk. It’s only after she’s locked it inside that he realizes that she’d held it that way to avoid leaving fingerprints on it.

“What are you doing, Elektra?” Matt asks, standing quickly as anxiety balloons in his chest. “Give that back to me.” If she’s going to use it as leverage, he’s got to burn it.

“We’re like no one else on Earth, Matthew,” Elektra says, facing him across the room. “Our lives should be extraordinary. You want to change the world? This is how you do it.”

He wishes it wasn’t as tempting as it sounded. For all the exceptional things he can do, pretending to see isn’t one of them—even 13 years after his accident, his eyes still roam in search of light. But at least with Elektra, he wouldn’t have to hold back the rest. He could be the truest version of himself, the one who can free-run across buildings and fight better than any sighted person could, who can smell the perfume of the woman who lives two stories below and hear a hiccup a block away.

And it was a chance to use it all for good. Because she was right: Sometimes the law is not enough. Sometimes, even, the law is the problem. And Matt knows he can’t fix everything, but he has to do what he can, and maybe Elektra’s right: Maybe he can fix more of the broken things this way.

“How do I know the Chaste are the good guys?” he asks.

“Because nature abhors immortality, Matthew. The longer the Hand live, the more their lives cost to sustain, and the more desperate they become to acquire the resources they need to keep going,” Elektra says patiently. “Gaining control of a G-20 economy like Argentina’s means the Hand can rebuild it to their own specifications and skim what they need from it for decades, maybe more. And if the people of Argentina starve, if the entire regional economy collapses, so what? Those lives are but a blink of an eye to the Hand.”

Her heart beats as steady as St. Patrick’s bell. That only means _she_ believes she’s telling the truth, but the logic is hard to argue.

“How long do I have to decide?” he asks.

“We leave in the morning.”

He laughs bitterly. This right here, this kind of setup is pure Stick: Throw you into an impossible situation that forces you to make a quick decision with incomplete information and hope like hell that your wits and skill will be enough to keep you alive.

He moves toward her and holds out his hand. “Give me that passport back.”

She laughs and begins to tie her hair up into a ponytail. “In the morning.”

“Now.”

She grins and holds her hands wide. “Come and get it.”

“I’m not going to fight you again,” Matt says.

“You’ll have to,” she says, slowly walking towards him.

“No.”

She takes a swing at him and he catches her wrist easily, dragging her forward so he can pin her arm behind her back. She laughs and, quick as lightning, gets in a sharp punch around his back to the kidney before he thinks to grab her other arm. Christ, she’s strong: The pain staggers him momentarily and he’d lay even money that he’ll smell blood in his piss tomorrow.

 _Fight now, hurt later, Matty_ , Stick says in his mind, and he does. They’re well-matched—he’s stronger and better at parkour, but she’s faster and has more experience fighting hand-to-hand.

Navigating the open plan of the two-story Natchios penthouse takes all the skills Matt has been honing at Fogwell’s and more. It means neither one of them can corner the other for long; there’s always room to move. The only place Matt wants to keep her away from is the kitchen—specifically, the heavy knife block bristling with blades. Would he actually stab him? He’s not sure, but as they fight he can hear her heart beating with what he easily recognizes as lust, and that frankly terrifies him.

So instead he slowly maneuvers her in the other direction, to the stairs leading up to the second floor to her parents’ bedroom—a push here, a feint there, a come-and-get-me handspring. The downside is that the quarters are much closer here, which work to her advantage, but at least it’s knife-free. His goal is to get her inside the bathroom and block the door with a heavy piece of furniture so he can buy enough time to crack the safe, retrieve the passport, and get out of the building.

That’s the goal, anyway.

What happens is this: She gets in close enough to knock him back on the bed and climb aboard before he can register that _this was nothing but foreplay to her_.

“You can keep the passport, Matthew,” she murmurs, nibbling his ear and tearing his shirt open. Her heart's still beating true, and he's reeling. “Just send me off with a proper goodbye, hm?”

He roars and flips her over, pinning her down as he bites her neck. “Sticked has really fucked you up, you know that?” he growls, kissing her hard. She smiles beneath his lips and grabs his hips to pull him forward.

“He's fucked you up just as badly, Matthew,” she laughs. “We were made for one another. Come with me. Come be a hero with me.”

“We don’t have to go to Argentina to do that, you know,” he says, working his way down her neck and collarbone with kisses and little bites. He pulls her shirt open and works the catch of her bra open. “Stay in New York. There are so many people we could help right here.”

“You mean catch muggers and bicycle thieves?” she laughs, gasping as he takes her nipple into his mouth and worries it lightly between his teeth. “Matthew, we could change history.”

“Yeah, but at what cost?” Matt asks, kissing his way over to her other breast. That one's nipple is already rigid with anticipation, and she moans as he flicks it with his tongue. He knows he can make her come doing this and nothing else, and he’s tempted to do it, tempted by some ancient barbaric urge to show off how well he can manipulate her body.

“What do you mean?” she asked hoarsely, slapping his face hard to knock his mouth away from her breast. “Not like that. I want you inside me when I come.”

He reaches up and pins her arms, laying big, hungry kisses on her mouth and jaw. “How many people have you killed?” he asks, and from the catch of her breath he knows the answer isn’t zero.

“It’s a war against immortality, Matthew,” she says, catching his bottom lip and biting it. “People die.”

“How many have died at your hand, Elektra?” he asks, rocking back to pulls down her leggings and panties, working a questing finger between her legs as he does. Sweat breaks out on her skin and her heart skitters joyfully as she grabs fistfuls of bedclothes and drags them toward her.

“Not many,” she gasps. “Slow down, would you?”

“You wanted me inside you,” Matt says. “How many?”

“I want your cock inside me, Matthew,” she manages. “Six. Five Hand, one Chaste who attacked me as a girl.”

“Jesus.” Matt stops for a moment and rests his forehead between her breasts. “Elektra.”

“In self-defense,” she protests. “Fuck me, Matthew. I need this.”

Her cunt is slick with need and her clit hard and eager for touch beneath his hand. He rises up on his knees to pull down his pants and as he does so she sits up and takes his dick in her mouth.

He clutches her shoulders as she works her lips and tongue and just the lightest touch of teeth against him, her hands curiously exploring his ass and balls until he’s so hard he’s dizzy.

He gently pushes her back onto the bed and works his way inside her. She sighs and wriggles into a more comfortable position and they begin to move.

“If I were to stay,” she says as their hips rock together, a surprising tentativeness entering her voice. “What exactly would I have to do?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stay tuned for tomorrow's prompt!


	12. Day 12: Monday, 12/31: New Beginnings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> dont worry about the mess  
> i love you  
> e

The bed is empty when he wakes up, and he knows immediately that she’s gone.

He wasn’t entirely surprised. He had laid out a plan that he thought would work—they’d stay in New York and become vigilantes, continuing their studies by day and fighting crime at night. _Think of the good we could do here, with skills like ours_ , he’d said. _Think about what it would mean for all these people in need, knowing that they had people as strong as us on their side. You want to be a hero? That’s how you do it._

And she’d listened with an honest heartbeat, asked genuine questions, seemed to get excited about it and offered a few refinements of her own, but even as they drifted off to sleep in each other’s arms, he knew it was as much a fantasy as their marriage. She was never going to abandon her mission—Stick would never allow her.

So why is he so disappointed to discover he was right?

He rises and pads into the shower. He stands beneath the hot water until his skin is nearly bleached of all feeling and his fight-sore muscles began to relax. He can't bear the smell of her on him anymore.

He dresses and goes downstairs, righting overturned furniture and straightening picture frames as he goes, and he gingerly makes his way over to the safe. It's not locked; the door swings open easily beneath his touch. He removes the passport and finds tucked inside it a note on thick, deckle-edged paper carefully hand-punched in Braille. Just nine words, but it he knows it must have taken her a long time to get right, because the scent of burned paper in the fire tells him what she did with her earlier attempts.

 _dont worry about the mess_  
_i love you_  
_e_

His heart catches against his chest and he doesn’t know why, after anything that’s happened over the past three days, _this_ is what guts him, but it does. He sits on the floor with the note in his hand and cries like he hasn’t cried since his father died, outright bawls like a baby because she’s gone and she isn’t coming back.

Eventually his sobs subside and he falls into a kind of weary grief. He takes the passport and drops it into the gas fire, wrinkling his nose at the awful chemical stink of the laminated cover melting as the pages burn.

While it burns, he heads into Elektra’s bedroom to collect the toothbrush and clothes he’s left here over the break, and his heart breaks again to discover that she’s packed his bag for him. He carries it into the kitchen, tossing it toward the front hall while he finds a pair of tongs to check the passport.

A quick touch tells him that there’s little left of it but ash and melted plastic. He scoops the plastic bits into a kitchen towel to drop into a dumpster somewhere. There’s no covering his tracks, really—his fingerprints are everywhere and a black light would turn up more than enough of his DNA to identify him—but a trashed apartment isn’t going to ruin his life the way a forged passport would. 

As he stands, Elektra’s note crinkles in his pocket and he takes it out again. He runs his fingers over it one last time, kisses it, and throws it into the fire, too.

He gives it five minutes to burn, though he’s sure it’s long gone by then, then switches off the gas and shoves the ashes beneath the steel logs with the tongs. He has no idea how well-hidden they are, but it will have to do.

He goes to the entryway to put on his coat and sunglasses and collect his cane and bag. Suddenly, he’s exhausted. He can’t remember the last time he’s been this tired. Not sleepy, just so, so tired. So tired that he no longer wonders how the past 13 years have led him here. So tired that nothing will ever really make sense again. 

“Goodbye, Elektra,” he murmurs, his hand on the door. And then, “Good luck.”

* * *

It’s barely noon by the time he gets back to his dorm, and he has no idea what to do with himself now. He changes into clean clothes and putters around, cleaning up a bit, considering whether or not he has enough laundry accumulated to justify spending the quarters on a wash. He doesn’t.

He sits back on his bed and passes his phone from hand to hand, trying to decide what to do. There’s no point in calling Elektra—she’s well on her way to Argentina by now. She’s made her choice and he’s made his. No phone call will change that now. He dials anyway and discovers his phone is dead.

Well, then.

He tosses the phone on the nightstand and tries to read, but he can't concentrate and keeps losing his place. Music doesn't work either, or the new standup album Foggy gave him for Christmas, and he can't begin to muster the energy to take a walk or even go to the library to work on his senior thesis. So he just curls up on his bed and...lies there, half-awake, half-drowning, half-numb, ignoring his hunger, his thirst, the ache in his muscles from the night before, the draft from the ancient window over Foggy's bed. He dozes here and there, and wills his mind to go blank, and eventually he sleeps for real. 

Some time later—he's got no idea how long—Foggy shakes him awake.

"What the—?"

"Hey man," Foggy says, concerned. "I ran into Elektra on my coffee run this morning. Are you okay? I've been calling all day."

Matt sits up, even more confused. "You saw her? When? Where?"

"Around nine, I think? Never imagined her slumming it at Starbucks, but there she was." 

_I'm sure Starbucks is perfectly nice if you've never had the real thing, Matthew, but once you've had coffee in Guatemala, you'll never drink anything else._

"She was waiting for you?" Of _course_ she was waiting for him.

"She looked like she was waiting for someone to pick her up. She had a suitcase with her. She said you two had broken up and she wanted to get out of town for a few days to clear her head." Foggy sat on the bed and leaned forward, elbows on knees, to look at him. "She said it was her fault, that it couldn't be fixed, and that you probably could use a friend right now. Then she just picked up her suitcase and left. It was kind of sweet, actually. Weird, but sweet."

Matt doesn't respond to that, just draws his knees up to his chest and rests his forehead on them. He doesn't want Foggy here, doesn't want him seeing him like this, doesn't want to do anything but wallow beneath the blankets and sleep until his heartbreak fades. 

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"Nope." _Go away._

"Do you want to order pizza and get drunk about it?"

"Nope," but as if on cue, his stomach growls so loudly Foggy laughs.

"Despite your words, I will take that as a yes," he declares, digging out his phone. "Hawaiian, right?"

"Foggy, you don't need—" Matt begins, but he can't find the words he means to say. He's not even sure they exist.

"Hey, man, it's okay," Foggy says. "Maverick and Goose, right? I got your six, buddy."

_This is the life you chose, Matthew. Now come and get it._

He turns his face toward Foggy and manages a quarter of a smile. "Yeah, Hawaiian sounds good."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _"You ever been tired, Red?" Frank asked._  
>  _"Yeah," Matt said._  
>  \--Daredevil S2E4: "Penny and Dime"
> 
> I'm sorry for the sad ending, but I love the idea of her pushing him back toward Foggy and some semblance of a family because she understands better than he does that he can't go it alone. I'm still not 100% sold on the idea of them being true loves, but I've finally found a way to understand why Matt loved her so much. 
> 
> Thank you, MattElektra shippers, for indulging me on this journey of discovery and letting me completely abuse the 12 Days of MattElektra event to work out my feelings about this relationship. xoxo

**Author's Note:**

> I'm still on [Tumblr](https://beaarthurpendragon.tumblr.com/).


End file.
